10-43: Be Advised...

with Doug Wyllie, PoliceOne Editor in Chief

New York Fire Patrol: A new future ahead

Editor’s Note:

Editor’s Note: In a little under 48 hours from the time this column appears on PoliceOne, I will be aloft in the jetstream, traveling eastbound toward New York City so that I may attend myriad events as the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 unfolds. I’ll be visiting with police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians all over the city. If you’re in New York this weekend and you see me scurrying from one memorial event to another, please don’t hesitate to say “hello.” Let’s spend some time together in memory of those we lost that sunny September morning. You can also “follow” me on Twitter or send me an email.

Before we get into where the New York Fire Patrol — an organization with a rich history dating back to 1803 — is going in 2011, let’s first look back at where they’re been. The group was originally organized as the Mutual Assistance Bag Company when merchants and residents in the downtown got together to find a way to prevent financial losses on insured properties as a result of fire. The Mutual Assistance Bag Company was a voluntary organization just as the fire department was at the time. According to information obtained from the FDNY, the volunteer members of the Mutual Assistance Bag Company would respond to fires and remove the building’s contents in bags to a safer location (thus the name) with at least one member remaining at the scene to prevent looting.

In 1835, the Association of Fire Insurance Companies took over the operation and employed four men at an annual salary of $250 each, making it the first paid fire service organization in New York City. In fact, some say with that the New York Fire Patrol the oldest paid fire service in the United States. In 1839, the New York Board of Fire Underwriters reorganized the group as the New York Fire Patrol, with the mission of patrolling lower Manhattan, discovering fires, and preventing losses. When New York Fire Patrol was shut down by the New York Board of Fire Underwriters in 2006, its roughly 100 patrolmen were responding to more than 10,000 alarms each year, working alongside the firefighters of Fire Department of New York.

In my column today on the approaching 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I mentioned that Keith Roma, a 27-year-old patrolman with the New York Fire Patrol, was saving lives and made the ultimate sacrifice when the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed upon him. Keith’s Father Arnie — himself a former NYFP patrolman and a retired NYPD cop — had narrowly escaped death when the South Tower collapsed. If you missed the story about Keith and Arnie Roma, I strongly encourage you to stop for a moment to check that out, and then resume here. In his “retirement” Arnie Roma has been working to create a new incarnation of the storied institution known as the New York Fire Patrol.

Expert Analysis

In his 20+ years as a New York City Police Officer, a registered nurse, and a volunteer firefighter, nothing prepared Arnold Roma for what was to happen on the morning of September 11, 2001. At 0846 hours that day — which began with ordinary daily routines performed under extraordinarily bright sunshine — ‘Arnie’ was at his Staten Island home unaware of the fact that American Airlines Flight 11 had just slammed into the north face of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. Already retired from NYPD, Roma had just finished his 24-hour shift as a nurse at Staten Island University Hospital, and had just laid down to sleep.

Meanwhile, Roma’s 27-year-old son, Keith, was just at the beginning of his own 24-hour shift with the New York Fire Patrol, a salvage corps which operated from 1803 until 2006 (read more on that here). Moments after the first airplane struck, Keith Roma was responding from his Greenwich Village firehouse to the mayhem unfolding at the World Trade Center. While en route, he called his dad.

“Keith called me and he said, ‘You’d better get down here because they’re gonna’ need everybody...’ I said, ‘Okay Keith, be careful, I’ll meet you there.’ Those were my last words to him. I told him to be careful — I’d meet him there. I never did. I was sent into the South Tower with another policeman, and Keith was told to respond and start the evacuations in the North Tower. So we never actually met,” Roma recounted.

So, What’s Next?The New York Fire Patrol reincorporated in the Spring of 2010 as a 501c3 nonprofit organization. Although the mission of the new incarnation of the organization closely mirrors that of its now-defunct namesake — to prevent and discover fires, while providing property damage mitigation services — there are some significant differences. For instance, the Board of Directors is not populated by insurance industry executives or their lobbyists. There are two WTC survivors, a former FDNY Battalion Chief, two former fire alarm dispatchers, and a former New York State Superintendent of Insurance.

Another notable difference is that funding for the new NYFP will come neither from insurance fees nor from taxpayer dollars. Roma and his team intend to rely solely on public contributions and both corporate and governmental grants. The New York Fire Patrol is already the recipient of a grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in an amount exceeding $120,000. Working with Jerry Brant of FireGrantsHelp, the Patrol has applications for other grants and awards pending at all levels of government and with several civic minded corporations and organizations.

“My idea all along,” Roma told me when we spoke a couple of weeks ago, “was to start it again like they started volunteer fire companies 200 years ago. So I got a great board together — retired commissioners and people in the field — and we reincorporated as a nonprofit. In order for us to operate and to be an emergency services provider with the Fire Department’s blessing, we have to have a state legislative charter. So we’re in the process of passing a law to have a charter. As you can imagine it hasn’t been easy,” Roma lamented.

Already, Roma has been instrumental in getting Senate Bill S5573 passed in the New York State Senate, and is working now toward passage of a corresponding Assembly Bill (A-8117) passed.

In terms of troops, Roma said he plans to start off small, hiring retired police officers and firefighters into union jobs, ensuring that every member of the new company has the proper certifications. “We have letters of support from every union,” Roma said.

If you’re interested in learning more about NYFP, they’d almost certainly like to hear from you. According to their website, they’re looking for “appropriately talented and experienced individuals to apply to become members of the organization and help out in most every conceivable area…from web design to fundraising, from field operations to accountancy, from office help to mending covers.”

About the author

Doug Wyllie is Editor in Chief of PoliceOne, responsible for setting the editorial direction of the website and managing the planned editorial features by our roster of expert writers. An award-winning columnist — he is the 2014 Western Publishing Association "Maggie Award" winner in the category of Best Regularly Featured Digital Edition Column — Doug has authored more than 800 feature articles and tactical tips on a wide range of topics and trends that affect the law enforcement community. Doug is a member of International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association (ILEETA), an Associate Member of the California Peace Officers' Association (CPOA), and a member of the Public Safety Writers Association (PSWA). Even in his "spare" time, he is active in his support for the law enforcement community, contributing his time and talents toward police-related charitable events as well as participating in force-on-force training, search-and-rescue training, and other scenario-based training designed to prepare cops for the fight they face every day on the street.

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